Donald Trump urges Democrats to support new healthcare reform bill, to repeal Obamacare

Washington: As Republicans scrambled Sunday to wrangle enough votes to pass health care reform legislation, US president Donald Trump — in an unusual bid to reach out to his political opponents — urged Democrats to support bill.

"The Republicans and Democrats don't get together," Trump complained on the Fox and Friends program, in a previously taped interview broadcast early on Sunday.

"The health care bill would be so great if the Democrats and Republicans could get together, wrap their arms around it so that everybody is happy with it," Trump said. "But we won't get one Democratic vote - not one."

But the measure so far has failed to garner enough support to pass with only Republican votes — although the party has a majority in the Senate — after a handful of GOP lawmakers revolted.

Democrats have formed a united front against the controversial measure that was drafted in secret, criticizing it as a "war on Medicaid," the health care program for lower income Americans, and calling it a worse plan than one that passed the House of Representatives in May.

For the past seven years, Republicans have worked to repeal Obamacare.

Senate Republicans are painting the new plan as less austere than the House bill which, according to a forecast by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), would leave 23 million fewer people insured than under current law.